Role Play In Preschool Conflict Behavior Research

Qualitative method with natural observation and interviews was used in this study. This study collected153children’s conflicts during role play from the bottom classes, the middle classes and the top classes in two kindergartens.This research mainly studied children’s conflicts happened during role play in different time, the relationships between two children in conflicts, the causes of the conflicts, the solutions, ending forms of the conflicts and the process of the conflicts.On the occurrence of children’s conflicts during role play, this study found that children’s conflicts often happened during the process of role play, and this study analyzed the conflicts occurred in different stages with cases.On the relationships between two children in conflicts, this study found that in general the children in conflicts were peers, but with the increasing age, the conflicts between peers decreased, the conflicts between roles ascended, conflicts between peer and role appeared an inverted U-shaped distribution. This study also analyzed the conflicts between different relationships with cases.On the causes of conflicts, this study found that in general children’s conflicts were caused by items and materials. With the increasing age, conflicts caused by items and materials declined, conflicts caused by role and the other factors (dispute for space position, large range of action and so on) increased gradually, conflicts caused by plots and chances of play showed ups and downs. And this study analyzed these causes with cases.On the solutions, this study found that the way children solved conflicts could be divided into verbal behaviors and nonverbal behaviors. Generally speaking, children tended to apply the nonverbal behaviors to solve the conflicts, however, with the increasing age, verbal behaviors increased gradually, while nonverbal behaviors decreased. During the conflicts, children’s behaviors, languages, expressions presented many features.On the ending forms of children’s conflicts, this study found that conflicts mainly ended in a positive way, with the increasing age, more and more conflicts ended in a positive way, while less and less in passive way.Moreover, this study found that almost all the behaviors happened during the conflicts had experienced the social information process which formed the whole process of the conflicts. According to the results and analysis, this study put forward the following education suggestions:teachers should give more space for children to solve the conflicts; teachers should give guidance when children asked for help or teachers thought they might need help. Teachers should pay attention to conflicts about role relationship and guide them as a role; teachers should pay attention to items and materials to reduce the conflicts caused by them; teachers should play a model role in order to change the way to solve conflicts; teachers should encourage them to change a thinking in order to help them to decentralize; teachers should encourage children and carefully use control and punishment; teachers should respect individual differences and treat children’s conflicts equally; teachers should pay attention to the discussion after the play to lead children learn different ways to solve conflicts.